Question

Please read the following additional details regarding the Recreation and Wellness Intranet project:

Several people on the Recreation and Wellness Project are confused about who needs to do what for the testing portion of the project. Recall that the team members include you, a programmer analyst and aspiring project manager; Patrick, a network specialist; Nancy, a business analyst; and Bonnie, another programmer analyst. John Prince is the project manager, and he has been working with managers in other departments to make sure everyone knows what’s going on with the project.

In addition, several issues have arisen on the project. The HR person supporting the project has left the company, and the team really needs more support from HR. One of the members of the user group supporting the project is extremely vocal and hard to work with, and other users can hardly get a word in at meetings. The project manager is getting weekly status reports from all of his team members, but many of them do not address the challenges people are obviously facing. The team is having difficulties deciding how to communicate various project reports and documents and where to store all of the information being generated. Recall that the team members include you, a programmer/analyst and aspiring project manager; Patrick, a network specialist; Nancy, a business analyst; and Bonnie, another programmer/analyst.

Create a stakeholder management strategy. Assume this organization has a project to determine employee's training needs and provides in-house and external sources for courses in developing communication skills for employees. Stakeholders could be various levels and types of employees, suppliers, HR, and so on.   Determine at least five different stakeholders for the project, and be creative in determining your potential management strategies.

Answer 1

Effective Communication is the foundation which defines the success of every organisation, department and team as without effective communication, each individual works in a silo type manner, without forging ahead as one with the extensive benefits of the strength derived from unity. The major part of communication is based on interpersonal skills and is required by every employee in every organisation to enhance output. The course content will be designed to ensure utility for every department within the organization.

Interpersonal skills one of the most important life skills that are required for achieving success in both professional and personal life. A lot of our success depends upon inherent ability to communicate effectively rather than extensively, as this is very essential to solving problems as well as finding solutions to overcome the numerous obstacles that we encounter in a personal and professional lives. Interpersonal skills do not only consist of verbal communication but communication and understanding of every type physical, emotional and mental.

Having excellent verbal communication skills that is being able to clearly express verbally our thoughts to ensure that the communication is effective. For this communication to be effective it is important that we have adequate listening skills which becomes input for our verbal output. If we are unable to process the input correctly the output will definitely be imperfect. This also includes all non verbal communication which is through body language, tone of voice, our facial expressions and our attention.

Empathy is an essential interpersonal skill which enables us to not only interpret and understand communication from others but also analyze the situation perfectly by putting ourselves in their place. It is very different from sympathy and denotes superior emotional intelligence the ability to understand and manage not only our own but the others emotions also. This also helps in the resolution of conflicts which may be personal or within the group in a positive manner true empathizing with both sides and assisting them through presenting the issue from the others viewpoint. Another skill set which is very important is the ability to operate within the group as a team through development of adequate analytical skills which may require working together with other group members and being able to view a problem through various angles and promote consensus on the solution. To achieve this we require adequate skills to influence the decision of others through assertiveness, as well as, persuasion. The same skills also serve as a great tool for negotiation when applied as a whole. Therefore, it is clear that, interpersonal skills are a major requirement for achievement of success within an organisation as well as in every relationship personal or professional. It is an essential part of our personality and it is personally important to have excellent interpersonal skills to ensure we are able to achieve our life goals.

The Human resources department will be convinced that the training will enable employee retention and enhance output, directly improving their performance. The marketing department will be explained the impact of better communication and interpersonal skills within the team to enhance output with increased sales. The customer relationship department will also be a major target as the job depends largely on excellent communication and interpersonal skills. Certain portions of the course will be designed to benefit all the employees and management requested to require all to take this short course by explaining how it will improve performance and output. The administrative department handles much of the communication of the organisation, internally and externally and is a major stakeholder.

That the team handling the task should be effective and efficient is most essential to ensure the successful implementation and completion of the project. Almost every organisation is presently making extensive and effective use of team structures for achievement of targets and completing projects. To ensure that the team operates as a cohesive unit with perfect communication, cooperation and coordination with each other, a set of processes is defined to achieve this and hence ensure success of the team with timely and successful completion of the project. Interpersonal processes especially form a very crucial part of the team processes as they can greatly impact the end-result of a project, success or failure. For the team manager handling a diverse team one of the very important aspects becomes to have a very clear focus on the project at hand and the results to be achieved. In order to attain this, it is essential to build trust within the team to ensure that every member is made to feel equally important, each member is utilised on the basis of their specialised knowledge and talent and every member has a very defined role to play within the team and understands the collaboration and communication required with the rest of the team to perform his job to the best of his ability. The team leader should lead by example and have an excellent relationship with every member of the team so as to better understand their abilities and their concerns and be able to control deviations from overall achievement of the goal. The manager needs to ensure that diversity becomes an asset in the form of better and more innovative approach methods and ideas. It should be a prism situation where a single ray of light produces a rainbow and all understand that the entire rainbow is together within the single ray.

Effective team cognition should be implemented effectively as this consists of a decision making process which is cooperative and at the same time and shows that the team has similar mental models. This would ensure perfect exchange of knowledge within the team the stable knowledge of the project and the dynamic knowledge of the situation at hand. As the roles and responsibilities are clear it promotes interaction and implements coordination within the processes at the same time understanding individual needs. The aim of this is to maximize the mental overlap to ensure shared knowledge within the team for working towards shared goals. Collaborative communication processes which ensure sharing and flow of communication for every task. It also ensures that the diverse group is trained to work as a team and all required methods are put into use such as the briefing, error corrections, relational communication it is very important to cohesion and indirect techniques for assessment of continued progress towards goals. Unified team vs Team which tends to polarise can usually impact the outcome of any project. Effective team cognition is very essential and it is it raining which enables the team to rule out various kinds of conflict such as an informational conflict and cognitive conflict which can result in operational conflict and sabotage the success of the project. It is required to maintain effective team coordination.

Therefore, the project with a perfect plan and an efficient team can be implemented and completed successfully.